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Patti Smith: How True Crime Helped The “Godmother of Punk” Survive · DISGRACELAND

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Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story about
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Speaker 1: Patti Smith is steeped in true crime, everything from the
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Speaker 1: criminal influence of her artistic heroes Jean Jeanet and William S. Burrows,
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Speaker 1: to the impression made upon her from her mother's obsession
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Speaker 1: with America's first true crime of the century, the Lindberg kidnapping,
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Speaker 1: to the influence of the Manson murders in New York
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Speaker 1: City's forty four caliber killings that Patty lived through in
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Speaker 1: late seventies New York, to the crime and grime of
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Speaker 1: Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel in forty second Street, rape
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Speaker 1: and murder, all of it just to shot away, as
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Speaker 1: they say. But Patty Smith survived all of it to
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Speaker 1: become one of the last centuries great artists, a great musician,
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Speaker 1: someone who made great music. Unlike that music I played
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Speaker 1: for you at the top of the show. That wasn't
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Speaker 1: great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron
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Speaker 1: called Falling from Chelsea MK. Two. I played you that
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Speaker 1: loop because I can't afford the rights to One Bad
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Speaker 1: Apple by the Osmonds. And why would I play you
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Speaker 1: that specific slice of plastic sibling cheese? Could I afford
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Speaker 1: it because that was the number one song in America
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Speaker 1: on February tenth, nineteen seventy one. And that was the
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Speaker 1: day that Patti Smith first took the stage with more
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Speaker 1: than just words, with a guitarist at her side, and
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Speaker 1: began building a previously unimagined bridge between the art world
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Speaker 1: and rock and roll. And she did it for the criminals.
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Speaker 2: On this episode, Junkies, Murderers, poets, playwrights, death, destruction, the
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Speaker 2: pursuing one's artistic calling, and how true crime helped Patti.
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Speaker 1: Smith survive at all. I'm Jake Brennan.
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Speaker 3: This is Disgraceland.
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Speaker 1: Though Patti Smith is known as the godmother of Ponkin
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Speaker 1: was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
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Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, She's much more than just
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Speaker 1: an iconic rock star. She's a literary luminary, a National
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Speaker 1: Book Award winner, and the recipient of the Penn Literary
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Speaker 1: Service Award. She's been honored by the French Ministry of
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Speaker 1: Culture and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, an
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Speaker 1: organization that in two thousand twenty four awarded Patty Smith
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Speaker 1: with their highest honor, the Jacqueline Kennedy on Nassis Medal,
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Speaker 1: She's met the Pope, she accepted a Nobel Prize on
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Speaker 1: behalf of and at the request of, none other than
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Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, and her name rings true throughout the same
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Speaker 1: universities and museums that teach and celebrate the author's poets
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Speaker 1: and artists Louisa may Alcott, Arthur Innbau, and Fried de Callo,
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Speaker 1: to name a few that Patty Smith has drawn inspiration
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Speaker 1: from throughout her life. To dismiss Patty Smith as merely
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Speaker 1: a rock star is like calling Steve Jobs a computer salesman.
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Speaker 1: She is not just a musician. She's what I refer
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Speaker 1: to as the high priestess of art, someone who holds
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Speaker 1: rare dual citizenship in the gritty origins of punk and
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Speaker 1: in the highest echelons of New York and European society.
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Speaker 1: Catholic priests speak of being called to the priesthood that
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Speaker 1: moment when they hear God's voice imploring them to serve Him,
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Speaker 1: to dedicate their lives to him, to sacrifice everything in
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Speaker 1: his name. Many of them faced not just persecution, but
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Speaker 1: even death in pursuit of their calling. Jesus's apostle Peter
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Speaker 1: was crucified upside down. Bartholomew, another apostle, was skinned alive,
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Speaker 1: tortured over days, and eventually decapitated. Deacon Lawrence of Rome
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Speaker 1: in the year two point fifty eight, a d was
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Speaker 1: roasted to death over an open fire. In seventeen ninety two,
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Speaker 1: during the French Revolution, over two hundred priests were massacred
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Speaker 1: by angry mobs in under forty eight hours. Spanish Clarician
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Speaker 1: priests Salvador and Jesuits, Mexican seminary students, and countless others
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Speaker 1: who were once called have been martyred and suffered horrific
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Speaker 1: deaths for their calling. But Patti Smith, who once famously
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Speaker 1: saying Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine, was
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Speaker 1: no martyr. She was and is an artist, and similar
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Speaker 1: to priests, artists here recalling they must also navigate danger,
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Speaker 1: violence and potential death murder even in pursuit of their art.
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Speaker 1: So when and where was Patti Smith, the high Priestess
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Speaker 1: of art called to become an artist And what kind
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Speaker 1: of danger of violence and true crime did she have
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Speaker 1: to escape to become the artist we all know her
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Speaker 1: to be As a little girl in suburban New Jersey
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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. The first stories Patti Smith heard
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Speaker 1: were dark. The original Brother's Grim collection of children's fairy
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Speaker 1: tales from the eighteen hundreds spoke of a stepmother in
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Speaker 1: the Juniper Tree story who decapitated her step son and
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Speaker 1: cooked his flesh in a soup to serve to the
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Speaker 1: boy's unsuspecting father. In the original version of Cinderella entitled Askinputul,
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Speaker 1: one stepsister uses a knife to cut off her toes,
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Speaker 1: and another hacks off the heel of her foot. Yet
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Speaker 1: these stories were nothing compared to what Patty later read
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Speaker 1: in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament, where in
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Speaker 1: Judges nineteen, one woman is severed into twelve different pieces,
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Speaker 1: each given to a different tribe of Israel. Her sin Nune,
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Speaker 1: she was offered up to protect the crimes of a rapist.
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Speaker 1: In Judge's four, Yale offers an unsuspecting enemy general hospitality.
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Speaker 1: When the general fall asleep, Yale takes a spike and
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Speaker 1: hammers it through his skull. In Kings nine, Queen Jezebel's
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Speaker 1: eunuchs throw her from a window, where she's then trampled
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Speaker 1: to death by horses. Horses horses and horse and later
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Speaker 1: on as a teenager, rape and murder were more than
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Speaker 1: just shot away. All of these stories were right there,
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Speaker 1: out in the open, in Patti Smith's Bible, and in
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Speaker 1: her history books, and in the museums she visited as
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Speaker 1: a child. If the executioner was feeling merciful, he'd build
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Speaker 1: the pire low to the ground to ensure a quick death.
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Speaker 1: But this executioner was not feeling merciful. He built the
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Speaker 1: pire extra high so that Joan of Arc would be
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Speaker 1: guaranteed a prolonged and painful death. That's exactly what happened.
8:02
Speaker 1: The flames took their time. The ancient Greeks used funeral
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Speaker 1: pyres to honor their departed emperors and heroes. The Romans too,
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Speaker 1: not the English. When it came to Joan of Arc.
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Speaker 1: They had something else in mind, revenge, public disgrace, maximum
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Speaker 1: pain in the eyes of the English dominated Ecclesiastical Tribunal
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Speaker 1: of fourteen thirty one, nineteen year old Joan of Arc
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Speaker 1: was a heretic. She claimed she'd been called by a
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Speaker 1: divine voice. She cut her hair, she dressed like a boy.
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Speaker 1: She made a mockery of modern authority in social norms
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Speaker 1: and in the process inspired and uprising that turned the
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Speaker 1: tide of the hundreds years War, driving the English out
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Speaker 1: of France. And for those perceived sins, she was now
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Speaker 1: roped to a stake in Market Square in the city
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Speaker 1: of Ruan, high above a gritted stack of dry wind wood,
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Speaker 1: built to burn slow and fierce, with its blue flames
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Speaker 1: snapping at the skin of her feet, and black smoke
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Speaker 1: corroding her lungs, white hot pain piercing every cell in
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Speaker 1: her body. The blaze rose up over her legs, her midriff,
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Speaker 1: and no one heard her scream and no one saw
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Speaker 1: her cry when the inferno engulfed her completely. Soon enough,
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Speaker 1: Joan of Arc was gone, but embodied only another martyr,
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Speaker 1: this one officially executed for the crimes of heresy and
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Speaker 1: cross dressing, but whose life's work would inspire generations and
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Speaker 1: whose name would forever ring true. In nineteen sixty six,
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Speaker 1: herself just nineteen years old, Patti Smith stood outside on
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Speaker 1: the streets of Philadelphia, across from the Museum of Modern Art,
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Speaker 1: about five miles from the more modern Market Square, and
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Speaker 1: looked up at a statue of Joan of Arc, Emmanuel
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Speaker 1: Fremier's gilded bronze depiction of the young martyr cast a
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Speaker 1: piercing impression upon young Patty. Here was this woman her
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Speaker 1: own age, who gave everything for what she believes. It
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Speaker 1: was then that Patty knew she would have to do
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Speaker 1: the same. It was then that Patty Smith heard her
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Speaker 1: calling in the shadows of martyrs and museums, to become
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Speaker 1: an artist. The stakes of failing to fulfill her life's
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Speaker 1: goal were, as they are for most teenagers, dramatic and intense.
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Speaker 1: A life as anything but an artist, a life as
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Speaker 1: something else in suburban New Jersey, would be its own
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Speaker 1: kind of death. But art was dangerous, and not in
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Speaker 1: the fairy tale Old Testament, musty historical kind of way,
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Speaker 1: but in a real and scary kind of way. One
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Speaker 1: of Patty's favorite novelists, Jean Janet, lived in squalor, forced
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Speaker 1: into a life of crime, and nearly imprisoned for life.
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Speaker 1: One of her favorite musicians, the jazz singer Billie Holiday,
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Speaker 1: died addicted to heroin. In her final living moments, she
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Speaker 1: was handcuffed to her bed by federal agents and placed
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Speaker 1: under arrest for narcotics possession. One of Patty's favorite painters,
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Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock was driven to alcoholism and eventually off the
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Speaker 1: road in his Oldsmobile, where he flipped his car, crushed
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Speaker 1: his skull, and decapitated one of his passengers. And these
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Speaker 1: were just the artists that Patty knew about thanks to
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Speaker 1: her true crime obsessed mother. Patti Smith also knew about
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Speaker 1: the dangers of the world right outside her suburban window.
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Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty two, Patti Smith's mother was traumatized by events
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Speaker 1: that were unfolding over the radio airwaves, just as the
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Speaker 1: rest the nation was One of America's most famous sons,
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Speaker 1: the aviator Charles Lindberg, was the victim of what had
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Speaker 1: quickly become America's most famous crime. Lindbergh's twenty month old
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Speaker 1: son had been kidnapped. The kidnapper used the latter to
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Speaker 1: creep into the second story nursery of the Limburg's New
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Speaker 1: Jersey estate. Within twenty four hours of the abduction, the
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Speaker 1: crime was a national sensation. By daybreak, over one hundred
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Speaker 1: reporters and photographers had breached the gates of the estate
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Speaker 1: and contaminated the crime scene. Notorious mafioso Al Capone issued
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Speaker 1: a statement from a Chicago jail cell offering a reward
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Speaker 1: for the return of the baby, and before the night
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Speaker 1: of the crime had ended, newswires like the Associated Press
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Speaker 1: were deluged with bulletins, transmitting over fifty thousand words in
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Speaker 1: just hours. Radio stations across the country took the unprecedented
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Speaker 1: step of canceling all all programming to issue a coordinated
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Speaker 1: bulletin describing the child's appearance, in effect creating a complete
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Speaker 1: national radio blackout, And it was through the radio that
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Speaker 1: Patty Smith's mother became transfixed with the early details of
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Speaker 1: the crime, as well as the saga's conclusion. Ten weeks
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Speaker 1: after the kidnapping, the badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh's
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Speaker 1: baby was found by a truck driver relieving himself on
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Speaker 1: the side of a New Jersey highway. The infant's corpse
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Speaker 1: had been partially scavenged by animals, Just like Jezebel and
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Speaker 1: the horses, and like Pollock and the crushed skull, like
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Speaker 1: Yale's enemy a hole through the head, and like Joan
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Speaker 1: of Arc, the Lindbergh Baby would not soon be forgotten.
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Speaker 1: Young Patty Smith was transfixed by her mother's retelling of
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Speaker 1: this story. She never forgot it, just like she never
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Speaker 1: forgot the grim or the Old Testament where Jean, Billy
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Speaker 1: Jackson or Joan. The lesson she took was that life
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Speaker 1: was dangerous, and so too the pursuit of art was dangerous,
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Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty seven, the only place to really
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Speaker 1: pursue art was in America's most dangerous place, New York City.
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Speaker 1: The whispers Patty Smith heard at night in Central Park
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Speaker 1: where the stuff of terror. The park was more than
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Speaker 1: a few colic playground for New Yorkers to laze away
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Speaker 1: their afternoons. Each night it became a den of violent criminals, thieves, rapists,
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Speaker 1: and murderers, all prowling about for the ruination of souls.
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Speaker 1: Central Park was also Patti Smith's sometime bedroom. It was
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Speaker 1: where she'd lie down during that first summer when she
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Speaker 1: arrived in the city. On those nights when she couldn't
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Speaker 1: find a welcoming doorway in which to lay her head,
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Speaker 1: Central Park was where she slept, And in nineteen sixty seven,
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Speaker 1: Central Park was also the place where a fifteen year
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Speaker 1: old girl was brutally raped and her friend stomped so
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Speaker 1: severely that he was left in critical condition. It was
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Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties, a place where nearly one
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Speaker 1: thousand felonies were committed on average each year. In Central
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Speaker 1: Park during the Summer of Love. For all the groups
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Speaker 1: of young hippies strewn about on blankets with acoustic guitars
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Speaker 1: and flowers in their hair, there were just as many
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Speaker 1: self described wolf packs, hordes of young neighborhood delinquents swarming
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Speaker 1: the park in shifts to rob in Maine, not just
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Speaker 1: the hippies, but the homosexuals cruising the park so called
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Speaker 1: predatory zones. Patti Smith may have slept in Central Park,
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Speaker 1: but it was in another park where she met the
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Speaker 1: first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe. She knew
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Speaker 1: him from the bookstore where she'd taken a job. He
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Speaker 1: was a customer, and she was in Tompkins Square Park
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Speaker 1: on a date with an older man, a man who
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Speaker 1: could afford to buy her a meal that she could
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Speaker 1: not afford to buy herself. But in New York City,
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Speaker 1: nothing's free, so just before the man attempted to collect
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Speaker 1: his payment sexually, Patti Smith recognized the good looking boy
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Speaker 1: from the bookstore and ran to him in the park,
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Speaker 1: introducing him on the spot to a predatory lunch date
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Speaker 1: as her boyfriend Robert Maplethorpe, who was high on LSD
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Speaker 1: at the time, went along with the ruse, which he
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Speaker 1: no doubt thought was hilarious. Robert found Patty Lee Smith
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Speaker 1: to be not only funny, but also sexy, intelligent, creative,
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Speaker 1: a perfect partner in crime for his own first foray
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Speaker 1: into New York City. They shared the same goal to
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Speaker 1: become artists. They weren't sure what kinds of artists they
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Speaker 1: wanted to become, just that they were most certainly destined
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Speaker 1: to create things that would change the world of culture
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Speaker 1: and art as they knew it. In their first apartment together,
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Speaker 1: the one in Brooklyn where they had to scrub the
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Speaker 1: wall of the splattered blood and psychotic scribblings from the
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Speaker 1: previous tenant, they painted, created drawings and collages, and wrote.
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Speaker 1: They read the great of the great writers, those who
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Speaker 1: were also criminals, not just Jean Jannet, but Paul Verlaine,
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Speaker 1: oh Henry and William S. Burrows, Burrows who shot and
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Speaker 1: killed his wife in a game of William Tell and
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Speaker 1: got away with it. And they studied to Cooney and Rivera,
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Speaker 1: Warhol and Picasso, and prayed at the altar of Coltrane
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Speaker 1: sympathized with those devils, the rolling Stones, and filled in
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Speaker 1: the oor gaps with the Cherells and Dylan Bob not Thomas.
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Speaker 1: They had little food, even less money, and they stole
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Speaker 1: when they had to, but they never begged. What they
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Speaker 1: did have was desire, and that desire gave way to faith,
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Speaker 1: and faith to creation, and soon the artistic callings of
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Speaker 1: each would bear fruit. Robert with photography and Patty with words.
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Speaker 1: A new apartment, this one in Manhattan, signified progress, with
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Speaker 1: the chalk outline of the dead body outside the front
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Speaker 1: door precipitated another move to a less dangerous neighborhood, so
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Speaker 1: further uptown they went to the Chelsea Hotel. These days,
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Speaker 1: the Chelsea Hotel on West twenty third Street, like most
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Speaker 1: of Manhattan, is a glitzy, gentrified incarnation of what it
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Speaker 1: once was a dangerous rooming house for bohemian vagabonds. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, the Chelsea was part artist colony, in
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Speaker 1: part central command for the drug fueled late sixties counterculture,
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Speaker 1: housing and hosting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen
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Speaker 1: in The Velvet Underground's Nico Salvador Dali, stayed at the
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Speaker 1: Chelsea when there was no room at the Saint Regis.
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Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg cruised the lobby for dates, even taking Patty
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Speaker 1: to lunch one day, mistaking her with her short crop
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Speaker 1: Joan of arc Hare to be a young pretty boy.
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Speaker 1: Dylan died at the Chelsea Thomas not Bob, while the
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Speaker 1: poet fell into a coma in Room two five after
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Speaker 1: downing eighteen straight whiskies before he was carried off to
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Speaker 1: be pronounced dead at Saint Vincent's. The Andy Warhol superstar
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Speaker 1: Edie Cedric set her room at the Chelsea on fire
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Speaker 1: while high on barbituates. She had to be rescued from
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Speaker 1: room one oh five, where Warhol has shot part of
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Speaker 1: his acclaim nineteen sixty six film Chelsea Girls. In a
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Speaker 1: few years prior, a twenty year old dancer named Lucille
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Speaker 1: Andell found herself on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel.
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Speaker 1: She walked carefully on her tiptoes close to the edge
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Speaker 1: before giving into the darkness that had overtaken her and
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Speaker 1: plunging to her death ten stories below. Along the way,
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Speaker 1: the usually graceful Lucille struck the third floor fire escape
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Speaker 1: with a thud, partially dismembering herself before pancaking on West
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Speaker 1: twenty third. But all the danger that the Chelsea Hotel
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Speaker 1: represented didn't scare Patty Smith. Instead, it compelled her. Besides,
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Speaker 1: Patty could navigate it. She wasn't big into drugs and
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Speaker 1: she seldom drank. And besides, she and her partner, Robert
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Speaker 1: Maplethorpe were broke. Which other hotel would take art as
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Speaker 1: collateral until they could come up with the cash to
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Speaker 1: rent a room. None, and no other hotel had Burrows
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Speaker 1: and the poet Jim Carroll roaming its halls. Patty befriended
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Speaker 1: both of them. She also befriended Janis Joplin, who stayed
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Speaker 1: in Room four or eleven during her run of shows
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Speaker 1: at the Fillmore East. Patty listened to Janis express herself
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Speaker 1: through music. Patty worked up poems with Jim Carroll, and
21:51
Speaker 1: Patty met Bob Dylan's fixer and confident on, Bob Newarth.
21:55
Speaker 1: Bob Newarth encouraged Patty to work her poems into songs,
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Speaker 1: to listen Hank Williams, to listen to blind Willie mctel,
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Speaker 1: to get down to the root of what she felt
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Speaker 1: and to pull it out and spill it all over
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Speaker 1: open chords on an acoustic guitar creatively. Patty was encouraged
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Speaker 1: and compelled. Robert was too, but in a darker way.
22:22
Speaker 1: It was nineteen sixty nine The Rolling Stones, as Brian
22:26
Speaker 1: Jones had died, and so too did the lsd Dreams
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Speaker 1: from the Summer of Love. Robert took the stone sympathy
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Speaker 1: for the devil a little too literally. Charles Manson was
22:38
Speaker 1: all anyone at the Chelsea could talk about in nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty nine. Just as Patty Smith's mother had been obsessed
22:44
Speaker 1: with the Lindberg case, Robert Maplethorpe was obsessed with this
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Speaker 1: latest crime of the century. Out in Hollywood. Seven people
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Speaker 1: were dead in what appeared to be a ritualistic murder
22:55
Speaker 1: spree with a decidedly rock and roll edge. The Tate
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Speaker 1: Labians in August of nineteen sixty nine were hard not
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Speaker 1: to be affected by, and so Robert Maplethorpe began working
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Speaker 1: a darker vision into his art. He became obsessed with
23:13
Speaker 1: the concept of evil. It was a stark counterpoint to
23:17
Speaker 1: his Catholic upbringing, a reflection of what he saw on
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Speaker 1: the street up on forty Second, where he hustled sex
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Speaker 1: for cash to help support himself and Patty. Patty worried
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Speaker 1: about Robert. Sex work was as dangerous as a gun.
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Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty nine, Midtown Manhattan, forty second Street aka the Deuce,
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Speaker 1: a neon open air sex market, predators and prey pros
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Speaker 1: and junkies applying their trade for pimps and pushers, chicken hawks,
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Speaker 1: older skeevee looking men in trench coats on the prow
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Speaker 1: for young runaways. A few went a long way. A
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Speaker 1: runaway could make a buck or two with one job
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Speaker 1: and be able to afford a slice of pizza, a coke,
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Speaker 1: and a movie ticket into one of the theaters, the Liberty,
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Speaker 1: the Empire, the Victory, and be able to pass out
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Speaker 1: in relative peace and quiet until the shakedown artist showed
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Speaker 1: up looking to rob this loosing patrons out on the street,
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Speaker 1: Robert Maplethorpe kept as cool. It was all about the look,
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Speaker 1: the right nod from the right dude, and Robert knew
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Speaker 1: it was on. But danger was everywhere. Cops supposed as
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Speaker 1: John's to entrap hustlers and turn their backs when they
24:39
Speaker 1: were harassed and assaulted. Many clients refused to pay. Some
24:44
Speaker 1: insisted on rough stuff with hustlers, strangulation, knife play. Sickos
24:49
Speaker 1: were slitting the throats and the theaters and the working
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Speaker 1: boy's screams drowned out by the soundtracks blasting from the screens.
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Speaker 1: Robert was a quote unquote rent boy, or so he
25:02
Speaker 1: told himself. He worked the streets to help pay his
25:05
Speaker 1: and Patty's rent at the Chelsea. It wasn't the sex
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Speaker 1: so much that bothered Patty, it was the danger. Their
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Speaker 1: relationship was an open one, and Robert's homosexuality by this
25:16
Speaker 1: time was no secret. It was also around this time
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Speaker 1: that Patty became romantically involved with the poet Jim Carroll.
25:25
Speaker 1: Jim hustled up on forty second Street as well. Robert
25:29
Speaker 1: asked Jim how he knew that he wasn't gay. Jim
25:33
Speaker 1: told him that he knew because he always asked for money,
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Speaker 1: whereas sometimes Robert didn't. Either way, Jim hustled for heroin
25:44
Speaker 1: and Robert hustled for rent. For Robert there was no
25:48
Speaker 1: other way to support his pursuit of becoming an artist,
25:51
Speaker 1: and for Patty there had to be a less dangerous way.
25:56
Speaker 1: Sam Shephard was that way. Sam was a writer, a
26:03
Speaker 1: California Cowboy a musician, an established off Broadway playwright, and
26:09
Speaker 1: by the time he and Patty Smith began their affair
26:12
Speaker 1: at the Chelsea Hotel, already a husband and father. It
26:17
Speaker 1: didn't matter. Sam encouraged Patty to sing, He bought her
26:21
Speaker 1: her first guitar. He encouraged her artistically romantically. Sam was dangerous,
26:27
Speaker 1: but compared to Jim Carroll.
26:29
Speaker 3: He was safe.
26:31
Speaker 1: Sam Shepherd exuded life, not junkie death. Sam didn't hustle, well,
26:37
Speaker 1: he did, but in a different way. Sam made shit happen,
26:41
Speaker 1: and by the time he was twenty seven, he'd won
26:44
Speaker 1: four Obie Awards for four different plays. The Obis are
26:49
Speaker 1: the highest awards given to off Broadway artists. Sam Shephard
26:53
Speaker 1: won three in one year. Sam convinced Patty that she
26:58
Speaker 1: had something to say, as if she needed further validation,
27:02
Speaker 1: but still hearing that her words carried weight from a
27:06
Speaker 1: sexy award winning playwright, couldn't hurt. Sam prevailed upon Patty
27:11
Speaker 1: to collaborate with him on a new play, and they
27:14
Speaker 1: called it Cowboy Mouth. Cowboy Mouth was a semi autobiographical
27:20
Speaker 1: account of Sam and Patty's relationship. Both acted in the
27:24
Speaker 1: two lead Roles when it was staged in April of
27:26
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, and there it was Sam and Patty's
27:31
Speaker 1: illicit relationship brought to life for all to see. Afterward,
27:37
Speaker 1: Sam freaked out, he had a wife and a kid,
27:40
Speaker 1: that it was wrong and he knew it. He abruptly
27:44
Speaker 1: left New York City to return to his family in Vermont.
27:48
Speaker 1: At first, Patty was devastated, but it didn't take long
27:52
Speaker 1: before she put a relationship with Sam Shepard in the
27:55
Speaker 1: proper perspective. It was brief, explosive, and overall a positive
28:00
Speaker 1: experience in the end, despite who got hurt and how
28:04
Speaker 1: it was worth it because Sam Shepard helped Patty Smith
28:08
Speaker 1: finally find her voice. Cowboy Mouth wasn't just autobiographical. It
28:16
Speaker 1: was also about a character who moves seamlessly between art
28:20
Speaker 1: and crime, specifically music, rock and roll, actually and crime.
28:26
Speaker 1: To this point in her life, Patti Smith had spent
28:29
Speaker 1: her life moving between art and crime, shoplifting, harrowing, hustling,
28:34
Speaker 1: Charles Lindbergh, Charles Manson, chalk outlined bodies and blood stained
28:39
Speaker 1: tenement walls, Jean Janet, William Burrows and William Tell, Willie Micktell,
28:45
Speaker 1: Bob Newarth, Robert Maplethorpe, and Jim Carroll, Sam Shepherd. It
28:51
Speaker 1: was all one big art and crime collage. It was
28:54
Speaker 1: who she had become, and now it was time to
28:57
Speaker 1: give voice to all of that transgressive inn influenced, to
29:01
Speaker 1: bridge the gap between art and artist, to be the
29:04
Speaker 1: voice of the voiceless, for those persecuted for following their calling,
29:10
Speaker 1: for their crimes, and to do it all with rock
29:14
Speaker 1: and roll. We'll be right back after this.
29:20
Speaker 2: We're We're where.
29:28
Speaker 1: On February tenth, nineteen seventy one, Patti Smith stood on
29:32
Speaker 1: stage at Saint Mark's Church in New York's East Village
29:35
Speaker 1: and stared out at the crowd. By her side, a
29:39
Speaker 1: lanky and musically lethal guitar playing friend Lenny Kay, staring
29:44
Speaker 1: up at them. From the audience, who's who of Downtown Cool,
29:48
Speaker 1: Lou Reed, Todd Rudgren, Robert Maplethorpe, Alan Ginsburg, and Moore.
29:53
Speaker 1: The evening was billed as a night of poetry featuring
29:57
Speaker 1: the Warhol, performance artist and poet Gerard la and Patty Smith.
30:03
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, Patty decided to include a musical element. Lenny.
30:09
Speaker 1: Lenny was already a musical Encyclopedia. He wrote for jazz
30:13
Speaker 1: and pop Rolling Stone Crawdaddy, and at the time was
30:16
Speaker 1: busy assembling songs for what would become one of the
30:20
Speaker 1: greatest compilation albums in rock and roll history, The Nuggets
30:24
Speaker 1: Original Artifacts from the Psychedelic Era nineteen sixty five to
30:28
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight set, which would become the definitive collection
30:32
Speaker 1: of American garage rock singles and eventually one of punk
30:36
Speaker 1: rock's guiding lights. In fact, the Nuggets Liner Notes feature
30:41
Speaker 1: one of the earliest uses of the term punk rock.
30:45
Speaker 1: Lenny Kay not only knew how to play guitar, Lenny
30:48
Speaker 1: Kay knew his ship. With Lenny at her side, Patty
30:54
Speaker 1: Smith stared out into the audience. As the crowd settled,
30:58
Speaker 1: the two performers looked at get their faces flushed with anticipation.
31:03
Speaker 1: They could all sense it something different was about to happen.
31:08
Speaker 1: New Yorkers know this feeling. It's familiar, the promise of
31:12
Speaker 1: the new that feeling that you're about to be let
31:15
Speaker 1: in on the secret, in on something special. It's a
31:19
Speaker 1: promise that in the nineteen seventies, New York City seemed
31:22
Speaker 1: to constantly fulfill. The lights dimmed guitar feedback began to
31:29
Speaker 1: creep from Lenny's amplifier, and the crowd dropped their nervous chatter.
31:34
Speaker 1: The feedback unfurled throughout the room, bending both piercing and
31:39
Speaker 1: warm at the same time, like a blanket of nails,
31:43
Speaker 1: and Patty grabbed the microphone atop the stand with one hand,
31:47
Speaker 1: raised her other hand in the air, and abruptly brought
31:50
Speaker 1: it down to her side. Lenny muted his guitar silence.
31:57
Speaker 1: Patti Smith leaned into the microphone and said, said, this
32:01
Speaker 1: one's for the criminals. With that, Lenny kay released the
32:06
Speaker 1: squeal and squawk from his Gibson melody Maker, and Patty
32:10
Speaker 1: meted out the powerful words from the first lines of
32:13
Speaker 1: her poem Oath, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
32:21
Speaker 1: And suddenly it wasn't a poem anymore. It was a song,
32:26
Speaker 1: and with Lenny it was rock and roll. Patty Smith
32:30
Speaker 1: had answered her calling and people loved it. The crowd
32:35
Speaker 1: that night adored her, and Patty was indeed something new,
32:39
Speaker 1: something unseen, a transgressive hybrid of poetry and music with
32:44
Speaker 1: something powerful to say. The sins of her generation were
32:48
Speaker 1: not yet answered for and maybe they weren't even sins
32:52
Speaker 1: who knew? That was the point, all the crime, all
32:56
Speaker 1: the transgression, the so called sins, The cross was there
33:00
Speaker 1: and theirs alone to bear heresy. Like all great art,
33:05
Speaker 1: the action is in the risk. Patty's words were shocking,
33:11
Speaker 1: like Joan of ARC's words. Patty's possessed unyielding conviction, and
33:15
Speaker 1: those words had the power to inspire. And inspire they did.
33:23
Speaker 1: Patty and Lenny brought their rock and roll poetry hybrid
33:26
Speaker 1: to other stages. After this, they opened for the New
33:29
Speaker 1: York Dolls at their famed Mercer Art Center gigs. They
33:32
Speaker 1: played Le Jardin at the Other End, which had been
33:35
Speaker 1: and would again be called the Bitter End, And before long,
33:40
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, Patty found herself on the Bowery
33:44
Speaker 1: in Manhattan's Lower East Side, with all its grit and grime,
33:48
Speaker 1: a motley collection of the unhoused and unwashed, derelics and
33:53
Speaker 1: artists clinging desperately to a world trying to shake them
33:56
Speaker 1: loose like fleas on the backside of a rabid dog,
34:00
Speaker 1: all just steps from William S. Burrows's apartment, where the
34:04
Speaker 1: iconic novelists lived in Squalor and would receive Patty as
34:08
Speaker 1: a guest whenever she was in the neighborhood. It was
34:11
Speaker 1: just Patty in her fearlessness, in her curiosity, and Borrows
34:15
Speaker 1: and his heroin and his shotgun. Down the street near Bleaker,
34:20
Speaker 1: the crowd assembled outside the doors of Cebe Gebi's A
34:24
Speaker 1: Little Die. No one had cared about five minutes before.
34:27
Speaker 1: But tonight, Patty, in the new band she'd assembled with
34:30
Speaker 1: Lenny on guitar, Richard Sole on piano, Ivan Carl on bass,
34:35
Speaker 1: and j. D. Darty was set to perform the Patti
34:38
Speaker 1: Smith Group, along with one of the most inventive groups
34:41
Speaker 1: to come out of the nineteen seventies in New York television.
34:45
Speaker 1: Both bands were in the midst of a multi week residency.
34:50
Speaker 1: Just like at the Saint Mark's Church gig a few
34:52
Speaker 1: years prior, you could feel the anticipation in the air,
34:56
Speaker 1: except now there were actual stakes. Ever since that first
35:00
Speaker 1: performance at Saint Mark's, Patty was heralded as a savior.
35:05
Speaker 1: This new art she was creating, this poetry rock and
35:09
Speaker 1: roll hybrid. It was the natural progression of a century
35:12
Speaker 1: long march from the romance of Arthur Rimbau to the
35:16
Speaker 1: squalor of Jean Jeannet, to the grime of Jim Carroll,
35:19
Speaker 1: to the pop of the Andy Warhol, to the music
35:22
Speaker 1: of Patti Smith. And therefore, Patty's music was seen as
35:27
Speaker 1: the antidote to the poisonous, drivel filling airwaves in the
35:31
Speaker 1: mid seventies, soulless, bloated, spiritually starved rock music. Patty was
35:38
Speaker 1: unofficially drafted by New York's downtown tastemakers and uptown glitterati too.
35:43
Speaker 1: As she said, quote, preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary
35:47
Speaker 1: spirit of rock and roll unquote, And that's exactly what
35:52
Speaker 1: the Patti Smith Group did each night at CBGB's. Patty
35:56
Speaker 1: drew strength from her mentor William S. Burrows in her
35:59
Speaker 1: best friend, the first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe,
36:03
Speaker 1: both of whom positioned themselves each night right up front.
36:08
Speaker 1: Robert was devoted to Patty's success as an artist in
36:11
Speaker 1: the same way he was to his own, on a
36:13
Speaker 1: near spiritual level. Soon, the powerful executive Clive Davis from
36:18
Speaker 1: Arista Records would also devote himself to Patty's success, signing
36:22
Speaker 1: her to a lucrative recording contract. The Patti Smith group's
36:28
Speaker 1: debut album, Horses, produced by the Velvet Undergrounds John Cale,
36:32
Speaker 1: the one with the stark and beautiful Robert Maplethorpe portrait
36:36
Speaker 1: of Patty on the cover, did what it was supposed
36:39
Speaker 1: to do, its part to save rock and roll. The
36:43
Speaker 1: album begins with a bang, just as Patty did at
36:46
Speaker 1: Saint Mark's, with the powerful rejection of the past. Somebody
36:50
Speaker 1: sins but not mine. Horses nailed the moment. Kids loved it,
36:57
Speaker 1: so did the critics. None other than america greatest rock
37:00
Speaker 1: critic Lester Bangs said in his Cream magazine review that
37:04
Speaker 1: Patty's songs on Horses touched quote deep wellsprings of emotion
37:09
Speaker 1: that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are
37:13
Speaker 1: capable of reaching. Unquote that was just it, few artists
37:19
Speaker 1: in rock or anywhere else. I don't know if Lester
37:23
Speaker 1: Bangs intended to cast Patty's are outside the parameters of
37:27
Speaker 1: rock or not, but that's exactly where her creativity was
37:30
Speaker 1: leading her. She wasn't just a musician. She was clearly
37:35
Speaker 1: something else, something new, someone an artist who wasn't only
37:40
Speaker 1: revealing something about herself and her listeners. She was revealing
37:43
Speaker 1: something that hadn't been revealed before. Here was an artist
37:48
Speaker 1: who was reclaiming rock and roll from under the safe
37:51
Speaker 1: nightlight of mainstream rocks radio play duvet and dragging it
37:55
Speaker 1: back under the grimy blanket of nails inhabited by the
37:58
Speaker 1: criminal underworld, both the perpetrators and the victims. Patty Smith
38:05
Speaker 1: was a revolution in an iconic twist. Her cause was
38:09
Speaker 1: celebrated not only downtown but uptown as well. Soon elite
38:15
Speaker 1: culture would take note and open its doors. Aside from
38:20
Speaker 1: the predictable grousing from conservative detractors over her line about Jesus, everyone,
38:25
Speaker 1: it seemed, loved Patty Smith's music except Robert Maplethorpe. Well,
38:32
Speaker 1: not exactly. Robert was an ardent supporter of Patty's, but
38:36
Speaker 1: ever since their earliest days, when Patty would sing to
38:39
Speaker 1: them back in that Brooklyn apartment, Robert would always say
38:42
Speaker 1: to her, sing me a song I can dance to, Patty.
38:46
Speaker 1: The world didn't dance to the songs on horses. They
38:50
Speaker 1: studied them like something worthy of a museum exhibit. No,
38:55
Speaker 1: the dancing would come later with Bruce Springsteen, perhaps you've
38:59
Speaker 1: heard of. At the time, Bruce Springsteen had just become
39:02
Speaker 1: the definition of an overnight sensation upon releasing his third album,
39:07
Speaker 1: Born to Run. The previously obscure rock and roll bandleader
39:11
Speaker 1: had rocketed to stardom when he appeared on the covers
39:13
Speaker 1: of both Newsweek and Time magazine simultaneously. Now, in July
39:19
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy six, he was filing a lawsuit against
39:22
Speaker 1: his manager, trying to extricate himself from a horrible contract,
39:27
Speaker 1: one that he believed to be criminal. Patti Smith, at
39:31
Speaker 1: the time, was playing shows in support of horses and
39:34
Speaker 1: preparing to record her follow up album, Radio Ethiopia, while
39:39
Speaker 1: living with her new boyfriend, the guitarist from Blue Oyster Cult,
39:42
Speaker 1: Alan Lanier. None of them knew it yet, but all
39:46
Speaker 1: three of these artists, much like their New York City fans,
39:49
Speaker 1: were about to be gripped in fear. Young lovers like
39:56
Speaker 1: Patty and Allen, and like the couples who flocked to
39:59
Speaker 1: records stores to purchase Springsteen's records, were about to get
40:03
Speaker 1: swept up in a year of paranoia because the New
40:06
Speaker 1: York City night now belonged to a lunatic July twenty ninth,
40:13
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, one ten Am Pellam Bay the Bronx,
40:19
Speaker 1: two women eighteen year old Donna Lauria and nineteen year
40:23
Speaker 1: old Jody Valenti sat in a nosemobile on the side
40:26
Speaker 1: of the road in the dark of night, discussing the
40:28
Speaker 1: time they just had at Peachtrees, a local discotheque, and
40:33
Speaker 1: the heavy rhythm from the tramps that's where the happy
40:35
Speaker 1: people go supplied the adrenaline still coursing through them. The
40:39
Speaker 1: vibe was pierced by a passing car on a not
40:41
Speaker 1: so far away street blaring the haunting new hit by
40:45
Speaker 1: Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper. Suddenly the mood turned,
40:52
Speaker 1: the street got a little darker, the inside of the
40:55
Speaker 1: car a little quieter. Donna opened the door to leave.
41:00
Speaker 1: From out of the darkness a man with a gun.
41:03
Speaker 1: Donna startled. The man crouched onto one knee, took aim
41:07
Speaker 1: at Donna with both hands, and Jody screamed. Donna Lauria
41:13
Speaker 1: died instantly. The gunman got off another two shots, and
41:17
Speaker 1: one hit Jody in the thigh. She lived to tell
41:20
Speaker 1: the harrowing story to the New York newspapers. Three months later.
41:26
Speaker 1: The next shootings happened two young lovers, eighteen year old
41:31
Speaker 1: Rosemary Keenan and twenty year old Carl Denaro escaped the
41:36
Speaker 1: killer who fired into Karl's car and Queen's Carl took
41:39
Speaker 1: a bullet in the head but survived and sewed, did Rosemary.
41:44
Speaker 1: The cops connected the forty four caliber shell casings from
41:47
Speaker 1: the Queen shooting to the Bronx shooting, and the papers
41:50
Speaker 1: came up with a spiffy name for this lunatic terrorizing
41:53
Speaker 1: New Yorkers, the forty four caliber killer. Baby, Don't Fear
41:58
Speaker 1: the Reaper. That line from the Blue Oyster cult single
42:03
Speaker 1: kept asking the impossible from speakers across the city in
42:07
Speaker 1: the spring. In summer of seventy six and later in November,
42:12
Speaker 1: another shooting Seasons, Don't Fear the Reaper. Another couple of
42:18
Speaker 1: teenage girls, another Donna, this one Donna Demassi sixteen, along
42:23
Speaker 1: with joe Anne Lomino eighteen. Two shots and both girls survived,
42:30
Speaker 1: but the papers, especially the New York Daily News columns
42:33
Speaker 1: Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, traded ink for industry scale paranoia.
42:39
Speaker 1: New Yorkers sweated out the winter. La la la la La,
42:44
Speaker 1: Don't Fear the Reaper. The new year nineteen seventy seven
42:50
Speaker 1: new shootings, another couple alone in the car. Christine Freud
42:55
Speaker 1: twenty six and John Diale thirty both were shot. She survived,
43:01
Speaker 1: he didn't, and the papers did their thing and the
43:04
Speaker 1: public paranoia ratcheted even higher. Love of two is one here,
43:10
Speaker 1: but now they're gone. March eighth, nineteen seventy seven, another
43:14
Speaker 1: shooting college student, Virginia Vouscashin, was walking back to her
43:19
Speaker 1: home in Queen's in the dark after class when the
43:22
Speaker 1: gunman appeared out of nowhere. She saw the gun, she
43:25
Speaker 1: raised her textbook in front of her face. The gunman shot,
43:29
Speaker 1: and the bullet blasted through the book and into Virginia's face.
43:33
Speaker 1: Virginia was dead here, but now they're gone. A month later,
43:40
Speaker 1: a model and her boyfriend parked at about three am
43:43
Speaker 1: on the side of the Hutchinson Parkway in the Bronx.
43:47
Speaker 1: One dead model, one dead boyfriend. Romeo and Juliet are
43:52
Speaker 1: together in eternity. Come on, baby, don't fear the reaper.
43:58
Speaker 1: And on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, when Daily News
44:02
Speaker 1: Calmness Jimmy Breslin was revealing to the world the psychotic
44:06
Speaker 1: ramblings of the forty four caliber killer sent to Breslin
44:09
Speaker 1: himself by the Killer, who claimed for all to be,
44:13
Speaker 1: in his words, the Son of Sam aka the self
44:17
Speaker 1: proclaimed Chubby Bohemoth aka Beezlbub aka Satan aka Death Himself
44:24
Speaker 1: aka the Reaper. While Breslin freaked New York City the
44:31
Speaker 1: fuck out, while cops hunted for the killer and the
44:34
Speaker 1: killer hunted for victims, Patty Smith was planning her next album,
44:39
Speaker 1: her third, the follow up to Radio Ethiopia. And while
44:44
Speaker 1: the NYPD hunted for the Son of Sam, Patty was
44:48
Speaker 1: still hunting for a song her friend Robert Maplethorpe could
44:51
Speaker 1: dance to. By June of that year, Bruce Springsteen had
44:56
Speaker 1: finally extracted himself from his legal problems. It was work
45:00
Speaker 1: on his belated follow up to Born to Run, an
45:03
Speaker 1: album called Darkness on the Edge of Town, and there
45:07
Speaker 1: was plenty of darkness to go around, especially in New Yorktown.
45:12
Speaker 1: Investigators were at a dead end, unable to hunt down
45:15
Speaker 1: the Sun of Sam. The Knight no longer belonged to
45:19
Speaker 1: the city's lovers, but Springsteen didn't care. There was something there,
45:23
Speaker 1: the wisp of a song. As the sessions began with
45:27
Speaker 1: producer Jimmy Iavin, Springsteen had the chorus it was defiant, triumphant.
45:33
Speaker 1: It reclaimed something. It went because the knight belongs to lovers.
45:39
Speaker 1: But that was it. That was all he had. The
45:45
Speaker 1: end of June came and the Son of Sam shot
45:47
Speaker 1: another couple, Salvatore Lupo twenty and Judy Placibo seventeen, and
45:52
Speaker 1: both survived. The Cobs kept up their hunt for the killer,
45:56
Speaker 1: but were still coming up empty by the end of
45:59
Speaker 1: the month. July hit with the heat of a thousand suns,
46:03
Speaker 1: and that meant that it had been a full year
46:05
Speaker 1: of terror in New York City. The self proclaimed chubby
46:09
Speaker 1: bohem Is celebrated by shooting at a parked car a
46:12
Speaker 1: couple kissing on their first date. Stacey Moskowitz and Robert Violente,
46:17
Speaker 1: both twenty. Both were shot in the head. Stacy lived,
46:21
Speaker 1: Robert did not. In August, Patty Smith entered the record
46:26
Speaker 1: Plan to begin work on her new album. That same week,
46:30
Speaker 1: police acting on a tip interviewed a chubby twenty something
46:35
Speaker 1: postal worker up in Yonkers named David Berkowitz. The following day,
46:41
Speaker 1: Berkowitz was arrested. The Son of Sam manhunt had ended.
46:47
Speaker 1: New York breathed a sigh of relief. Patty Smith kept
46:53
Speaker 1: her head down and worked, still hunting for a hit,
46:57
Speaker 1: a song Robert Maplethorpe could dance to. On September twenty seventh,
47:02
Speaker 1: Jimmy Ivien, who was also now producing Patty's new album,
47:06
Speaker 1: brought Springsteen's demo of Because the Knight into the studio
47:09
Speaker 1: for Patty. Patty heard something in the song that Bruce
47:13
Speaker 1: hadn't not just defiance, but again reclamation. She channeled it
47:19
Speaker 1: all into verse lyrics, Come on, now, try and understand
47:24
Speaker 1: the way I feel when I'm in your hands, take
47:27
Speaker 1: my hand, come undercover. They can't hurt you now, can't
47:32
Speaker 1: hurt you now, can't hurt you now, because The Knight
47:36
Speaker 1: belongs to lovers once more, and now the Son of
47:42
Speaker 1: Sam was behind bars, and young couples in New York
47:45
Speaker 1: were once again free to frolic. Because The Knight was
47:50
Speaker 1: a massive smash. Patty Smith had her hit, and Robert
47:54
Speaker 1: Maplethorpe had a song he could dance to. Now Patty
48:24
Speaker 1: Smith was more than just an artist. For a minute,
48:28
Speaker 1: it seemed Patty Smith was a pop star. Because The
48:33
Speaker 1: Night was Patty Smith's commercial breakthrough. It was a top
48:36
Speaker 1: forty hit, top five in the UK Easter. The album
48:41
Speaker 1: that the single supported sold better than Patty's previous two
48:45
Speaker 1: albums combined. But pop stardom was never her goal being
48:50
Speaker 1: an artist was. An artist need fuel and inspiration, and
48:55
Speaker 1: sometimes the only source for them is love and Naturally,
49:00
Speaker 1: while at the top of her game, Patti Smith walked
49:03
Speaker 1: away from the game. She fell in love with another artist,
49:07
Speaker 1: another guitarist, this one fred Sonic Smith from the proto
49:11
Speaker 1: punk anarchists and Motor City Legends the MC five. In
49:16
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Pattie moved to Detroit to marry Fred
49:20
Speaker 1: and traded a quote unquote career for fulfillment, the kind
49:25
Speaker 1: of fulfillment that only creating a family can bring. But
49:28
Speaker 1: soon enough, New York City would come calling again with
49:32
Speaker 1: some very bad news. By the late eighties, Patti Smith's
49:37
Speaker 1: best friend, the first great love of her life, her
49:40
Speaker 1: creative confidant, her literal infigurative partner in crime. During those
49:44
Speaker 1: formative years in New York, Robert Maplethorpe, after having become
49:48
Speaker 1: one of the most successful photographers on the planet, was
49:52
Speaker 1: dying from AIDS related complications. On his deathbed, Robert asked
49:57
Speaker 1: Patty appointed question, did art get us. Perhaps art took Robert,
50:06
Speaker 1: but it didn't take Fred's Sonicsmith heart failure did Patty's
50:10
Speaker 1: other great love. Fred Smith died in nineteen ninety four,
50:15
Speaker 1: five years after Robert Maplethorpe, and Patty did what all
50:19
Speaker 1: great artists do to process grief. She worked, She made
50:23
Speaker 1: new music, went on tour with Bob Dylan, moved back
50:27
Speaker 1: to New York City, and she wrote prodigiously, publishing books
50:31
Speaker 1: of poetry, books about her obsession with the works of Warhol,
50:35
Speaker 1: books of drawings, of photography, a collection of song lyrics,
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Speaker 1: all to critical acclaim, and in twenty ten she released
50:44
Speaker 1: Just Kids, a personal memoir of her early life in
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Speaker 1: her time in New York City with Robert Maplethorpe, and
50:51
Speaker 1: later that year, Just Kids won the National Book Award
50:54
Speaker 1: for non Fiction, one of the most prestigious literary honors
50:58
Speaker 1: in the world. In twenty fifteen, Patty released a second memoir, Mtrain,
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Speaker 1: which focused more on her present life and the unconventional
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Speaker 1: ways in which she'd pursued making art and the irredeemable
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Speaker 1: loss she felt after the death of her husband Fred.
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Speaker 1: Mtrain was a national best seller, and Patty followed it
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Speaker 1: up with four more titles, including the recent Bread of Angels,
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Speaker 1: another memoir. Each book was released to more critical praise
51:29
Speaker 1: and numerous awards and nominations Grammys, a Pen Award, the
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Speaker 1: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, honorary doctorates from prestigious universities. It's
51:39
Speaker 1: now twenty twenty six, and it's clear that Patti Smith
51:43
Speaker 1: is still living a life that few artists get to live.
51:47
Speaker 1: She is, as I mentioned earlier, the high priestess of art.
51:51
Speaker 1: She has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, artistic credibility
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Speaker 1: in the underground, and doors that fly open for her
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Speaker 1: at elite cultural institutions. Most importantly, she survived. She's seventy
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Speaker 1: nine years old and has lived to harvest the fruits
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Speaker 1: of her artistic labor, no small feat. Most artists of
52:13
Speaker 1: consequence succumbed to the ever present danger that surrounds them.
52:18
Speaker 1: Jean Janey and William S. Burrows lived to be seventy
52:21
Speaker 1: five and eighty three, respectively, but Rimbaud died at thirty seven,
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Speaker 1: Pollock at forty four, Coltrane at forty, Brian Jones twenty seven,
52:31
Speaker 1: and too many other artists to name, all of whom
52:34
Speaker 1: died too young, And of course there was Robert Maplethorpe,
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Speaker 1: who asked, did Art get us dead at just forty two.
52:46
Speaker 1: Perhaps the reason Patty Smith survived is something that she
52:50
Speaker 1: revealed in m Train. When you read it, you can't
52:53
Speaker 1: help but feel Patty writing at times in a sort
52:56
Speaker 1: of gumshoe detective way, channeling her inner Mickey Lane, her
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Speaker 1: inner Raymond Chandler. It's not full on Philip Marlowe. It's subtle.
53:05
Speaker 1: But what isn't subtle is Patty's love of detective fiction,
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Speaker 1: both on the page and on screen. In a word,
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Speaker 1: Patti Smith is crime obsessed. Law and Order, The Girl
53:20
Speaker 1: with the Dragon Tattoo, Midsummer Murders, Sherlock Holmes, Luther, CSI, Miami,
53:27
Speaker 1: The Killing. Patti Smith reveals an m Train that she
53:31
Speaker 1: is so obsessed with some of these crime series that
53:34
Speaker 1: she will sometimes rearrange her travel schedule in order to
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Speaker 1: catch various shows when they air on TV in different countries.
53:41
Speaker 1: Her obsession with the show The Killing was so intense
53:44
Speaker 1: that she wrote to the producers when it was canceled
53:47
Speaker 1: to mourn the loss. The producers responded by giving Patty
53:51
Speaker 1: a cameo on one of the series' last episodes, but
53:57
Speaker 1: Patty Smith's obsession with TV crime shows I don't believe
54:01
Speaker 1: that it's just folly. I believe that it comes from
54:04
Speaker 1: Patty's extensive exposure to actual crime throughout the course of
54:08
Speaker 1: her life. The Lindbergh Baby, Charles Manson, The Son of Sam.
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Speaker 1: These true crime stories were formative for Patty Smith, as
54:19
Speaker 1: was the ever present danger of New York City in
54:21
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and seventies. The blood splattered walls of
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Speaker 1: her first apartment, the body outlined in chalk on the
54:28
Speaker 1: street outside Roberts, the dancer plunging to her death from
54:32
Speaker 1: the top of the Chelsea, her friend William S Burrows,
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Speaker 1: who shot and killed his wife and got away with it.
54:38
Speaker 1: Jim Carroll's deadly addiction to heroin, Robert Maplethorpe's forty Second
54:42
Speaker 1: Street Hustling. Not to mention the addiction, violence, and deadly
54:46
Speaker 1: recklessness that accompanies most artists lives. Patty Smith was a
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Speaker 1: hair's breath from all of it, and she learned from
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Speaker 1: it all, learned from the crime, learned how not to
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Speaker 1: succumb to the danger of it, but instead to use
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Speaker 1: it as creative fuel. Patti Smith survived to become that
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Speaker 1: rare type of artist that she became because I believe
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Speaker 1: Patty Smith knew what all crime fiction and true crime
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Speaker 1: fans know, and that's how to stay safe, to be
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Speaker 1: vigilant aware, and like all great artists, to trust her intuition,
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Speaker 1: to believe in that calling, because the Knight doesn't just
55:29
Speaker 1: belong to lovers, it belongs to the criminals. I'm Jake
55:35
Speaker 1: Brennan in this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, you've not
55:57
Speaker 1: heard the Patti Smith episode of the Disgrace lamp polls.
56:00
Speaker 1: The question I want to ask you all is which
56:02
Speaker 1: musicians memoir or autobiography would you recommend? Get your answers
56:07
Speaker 1: in via voicemail and text to six one seven nine
56:09
Speaker 1: oh six six six three eight, or hit me on
56:11
Speaker 1: the socials at Disgrace lampod in the comments. Here comes
56:15
Speaker 1: some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
56:19
Speaker 1: produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network
56:22
Speaker 1: in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found
56:26
Speaker 1: on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
56:30
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56:33
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56:36
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56:47
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56:56
Speaker 1: rock a Rolla
57:01
Speaker 2: He's a bad dead Man.